DID ANGELS INTERMARRY WITH PEOPLE IN GENESIS 6?

In Genesis 6:2-4, 5 it says that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” Verse 7, So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth.”

For years I thought that this passage referred to descendants of Seth (referred to as the sons of God) intermarrying with the descendants of Cain (referred to as the daughters of men). In other words, the godly line, descendants of Seth, intermarried with the ungodly line, descendants of Cain. After all, it couldn’t be spirit being intermarrying with mankind since Jesus said that in heaven, there is no marriage (Matt 22:30). But recently (2011) I have been reading other thoughts (from Arnold Fruchtenbaum, a Messianic Jewish scholar) and have come to another conclusion.

Who were the “sons of God”? Who were the “daughters of men”? Who were the “Nephilim”? 

In the Old Testament the term “sons of God” refers to angels. In the New Testament, the term is expanded. Adam is called a “son of God” (Luke 3:38). Believers are called sons of God (John 1:12). But in Genesis the Hebrew expression, benei elohim, is always used to refer to angels.

The context of this passage shows that this was an “unusual” cohabitation, an unnatural one which actually led to the flood. So what we see here is not a common or natural phenomenon. 

As you read through this passage in Genesis, verses 1-4 deal with the angelic cause of the flood, verses 5-6 deal with the human cause. Something was going on here that was strange, weird and unnatural. Cohabitation between descendants of Seth and Cain would not fit this description. It had to be something else.

What do we know about angels? Angels are not sexless, but Scripture always refers to angels as males. They are not referred to as females or a neuter gender. Jesus taught that angels do not marry in the resurrection (Luke 20:36). And in Hebrews it says that we should be kind to strangers because in this way we might entertain angels without knowing it (Heb 13:2). So it appears that angels can manifest themselves as human beings, without us knowing it. So angels are males and can make themselves appear to be human. Now when Jesus said they do not marry, he is saying that they will not marry “in the resurrection.” This does not exclude them from having married humans in this life.

A clue as to what actually happened in Genesis 6 is found in Genesis 3:15. If you go back to Genesis 3:15 you see the first prophecy of the coming Messiah, he would be the “Seed of the Woman and this Seed would crush the head of Satan.” What Satan is trying to do in Genesis 6 is to corrupt the Seed of woman by having some of his fallen angels (demons) take on human form and intermarry with humankind to corrupt the seed. When God said that he “would not contend with man forever, for he is mortal,” it means that he would not continue to tolerate this evil and the flood would come to destroy the product of these unions (called Nephilim). The term Nephilim means “fallen ones.” The term is sometimes translated “giants,” but more accurately it should be fallen ones, some type of superhuman, but not necessarily giant in size.

We get another clue as to what happened in II Peter 2:4-5 where it says, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, (Gen 6) but sent them to hell (tartarus), putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah . . . .” So these fallen angels are currently confined to hell.

Jude 6, 7 “And the angels who did not keep their position of authority but abandoned their own home-these he has kept in darkness (tartarus), bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion.” The sin that these angels committed was similar to those in Sodom and Gomorrah; they went after “strange flesh.”

After believing for forty years that Genesis 6 referred to descendants of Seth intermarrying with descendants of Cain, I now think otherwise. What took place in Genesis 6 was probably unnatural relations between some of the fallen angels with humans in an attempt by Satan to corrupt the seed of Eve from which would come the Messiah who would ultimately defeat Satan.